Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Those jeans reminded me of Dvoretsky. Anyone under 2000 should not be reading his books and I'm guessing anyone over size four would be ill-advised to wear what one woman called a "3-dimensional cut which follows the natural curve of the body."

Fashion makes impossible demands on all of us. I resolve to read Dvoretsky (but on days when I'm over 2000), break 2200, and get back to a 32 waist!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Page 271 of Tony Miles' posthumously published biography, It's Only Me (an anagram of "Tony Miles"), mentions an opening trap in the Semi-Slav Defense with which Miles won a piece at move 9, but almost lost the game! The game is given below. It's very wild, and major improvements are doubtless possible for White. One possibility is 14.Bg5, which won quickly after 14...Ne4 15.Qxg8+ Kd7 16.Qxf7+ Kc6 17.Qe8+ 1-0 in Dimitar Marholev (2419)-Miroljub Lazic (2493), Cutro Open 2006. Unfortunately, Black gets to deviate too. Instead of 6...Bb4, as Jelling played against Miles, Black has scored 88% (+10 =1 -1) with 6...Qb6.

Edward Winter has published a new feature article about Bent Larsen, Bent Larsen (1935-2010), which has a lot of interesting quotes from him.

I once met Larsen. I was attending Columbia Law School in New York, and went to see the end of New York 1984. I saw Larsen, introduced myself, and thanked him for ranking my game against Sprenkle the most theoretically important in Informant 32. (Byrne ranked it second, Razuvaev ranked it tenth, and the other judges were underwhelmed. Overall it ranked 8th-9th, tying with Fedorowicz-Plaskett. See Informant 33, p. 9.) He kindly remarked that some of my moves in that game had been hard to find. A very nice man. How often does an ordinary master get such a compliment from a living legend?

The London System has an innocuous reputation, but it's a dangerous weapon in Angelo Young's hands. White has a beautiful-looking (almost winning?) position after 17 moves, but Angelo couldn't find a way to convert.

18.e6!? is an interesting try in the diagrammed position below: the Rh8 gets trapped in some variations. But Black seems to be able to defend here, too. Thoughts?